well-dressed foolish ideas

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are well-dressed fools.
- Sebastien Chamfort

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Monday, November 13, 2006

Just in case it all goes wrong

I love three day weekends. They're fun. They do, however, make for not exciting blog fodder. So here's what I learned from the BBC today.

According to a BBC program, the word vegan was first widely used in the 1940's. It didn't specify exactly how widely it was used in the 40's, though.

The Oxford English Dictionary folks first estimated it would take them 10 years to write the dictionary starting in the middle (ish) of the 1800's. It took 5 years to get definitions from A to Ant. Finally when it was first published, it had 15,000 pages.

Also, the BBC blames Americans for ruining English.

Apparently, we are the only people to split infinitives, and I hear that we also have a sickening habit of using dangling modifiers. Now, please go ask any Brit on the street what either of those phrases actually mean in grammatical terms.

Side note: Because I have never experienced Blogger to be that reliable when changing anything, I just wanted to put up a post that tells you that if you don't hear from me for a while, it might be because I'm just about to "upgrade" to the new beta!